


Campfire Songs for Lonely Wanderers

by elanoides



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, is this a songfic? possibly, yes those & tags are intentional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 16:44:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15999269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanoides/pseuds/elanoides
Summary: A cycle of songs sung by the Mighty Nein on their travels, from late nights to sticky situations to quiet moments.





	Campfire Songs for Lonely Wanderers

**Author's Note:**

> A playlist of all the songs is available here: https://bit.ly/2NJTiPA

I.

Caleb has always liked the night. Darkness calms, soothes, clears. Both moons are out tonight, one full, the other nearly so, and the light fills the grove and spills over.

It’s this way, on watch in the middle of the night with the wind high in the cottonwoods, that he remembers the song. Just a scattering of notes, but it pulls at him, there in the dark and the silence. How did it go, again?

Caleb starts humming, gets one note out before stopping himself. But his friends are still sound asleep under the cottonwoods, and it’s well past midnight, and the moons are glowing silver in the endless, silent darkness.

The song was slow, he recalls, rolling smooth. The first line— perhaps he does remember that, and he hums, _Moon River, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style someday…_ The sound shivers in the back of his throat. There’s a sadness to it.

Caleb starts into the next lines, and as he does, he hears another voice, humming in time with him. He’s jumping to his feet when he puts together that it’s Molly standing behind him, and so he stops halfway and topples over instead.

“Did I startle you?” Molly asks, helping him up.

“Yes,” Caleb says, and brushes his coat off. “Did I— did I wake you?”

“That song you were singing,” Molly says, “I thought I recognized it.” His face is laid strangely bare by the moonlight.

Caleb sits down again. “I only just now remembered it myself.”

“All I know is the tune.” Molly sits beside him in the grass, doesn’t look at him, just stares up at the moons above. The silence does not ache, but it feels full.

“Where did you hear it?” Caleb asks, finally.

“Oh, I hear a lot of songs.” Molly stretches a little. “The circus, probably. A town we passed through. Is it Zemnian?”

“Ah, no, the words are in Common.”

“Hm.” The silence drifts, carries them along. “Sing it for me?”

“I— I do not have a particularly good singing voice,” Caleb warns.

“To be perfectly honest,” Molly says with a crooked grin, “neither do I.”

“Very well.” It takes some gathering, a moment to brush the small silences away, but Caleb sings: “Moon River, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style someday…” His voice is rusting at the edges; Molly nods at him to keep going. “You dream maker, you heartbreaker—”

Molly finishes the verse: “Wherever you’re going, I’m going that way.”

“You do know the song, then.”

“Oh, now that I’ve heard it, certainly.”

“The next part goes, ah—” Caleb clears his throat— “Two drifters, off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world to see. We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waiting round the bend, Moon River and me.”

Molly joins in partway through. His voice isn’t much better than Caleb’s, but their shaky melodies meld with the light of the moon.

“Are there more verses?” Molly asks.

“I do not recall.”

“It’s an awfully sad song, isn’t it?”

“No, I would not say so.” Caleb looks away, into the lapping shadows. “It is… reassuring, in a way.”

“Maybe so,” Molly says. “Maybe so.”

They sit for long hours after that. Molly dozes; Caleb keeps watch. The sun rises, and the silence wicks away with the dew on the grass.

 

 

II.

Molly wakes up, and Yasha’s gone.

He sits up and pats her bedroll, checking, even though there’s no way someone as big as Yasha could hide herself entirely in a bedroll. Molly tosses back his blanket, locates his breeches, and crawls out of the tent. Maybe she just couldn’t sleep. She’d agreed to share the tent, since it was raining so hard before, but he knows she doesn’t like sleeping within any kind of walls.

It’s stopped raining now. The night is warm, and the air is dark and thick. There’s rain in the grass, and it soaks Molly’s bare feet as he steps around the corner of the tent. Sure enough, Yasha’s there, a dark shape staring up at the sky. He sits down next to her, ignoring how the rain soaks through the seat of his pants.

They’ve both had nights like this, when it’s hard to remember to breathe, hard to remember that the sun is going to rise. Molly scoots a little closer to Yasha. She doesn’t move away, and he leans his head on her shoulder, careful of his horns and her furred shrug. She hasn’t taken it off, hot as it is.

Yasha stares up at the sky, and the clouds drift, showing stars in places. Molly makes himself a solid weight, heavy enough that maybe Yasha will stay. The rain-soaked grass, the hot night air, and Mollymauk Tealeaf, and Yasha.

Last night, around the embers of the campfire, Gustav had sung something soft and slow. Something about strawberries. How had it gone?

Molly breathes in, feels his ribs creak with it, and lets the words come. “Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine, I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine…” His voice is rough and aching, flat on the higher notes. Good enough.

“A million tomorrows shall all pass away, ‘ere I forget all the joys that are mine today.”

Breathe in. Out.

“Oh, I’ll be a dandy and I’ll be a rover, you’ll know who I am by the song that I sing.”

Breathe.

“I’ll feast at your table, I’ll sleep in your clover, who cares what tomorrow shall bring.”

Breathe.

“I can’t be contented with yesterday’s glory, I can’t live on promises winter to spring. Today is my moment and now is my story, I’ll laugh and I’ll cry and I’ll sing…”

Molly’s voice peters out, and he stops singing, breathes slowly again. Yasha sighs, and after a moment, she matches her breathing to his. In for four, hold for eight, and out for eight again.

“You didn’t leave,” Molly says eventually.

“No,” Yasha says. “Not for a little while, I don’t think.”

“Good.” Selfish, but he’s only been a person for a year and a half; he can afford a little selfishness.

They sit there for a while longer. Molly takes his head off Yasha’s shoulder and stretches out in the grass. He’s almost asleep again by the time she lies down next to him. The clouds are starting to clear.

 

 

III.

It’s dry in Glynnhill, but there’s lightning on the horizon. Yasha would think it was heat lightning if not for the thunder. Not audible, perhaps, but she feels it in her bones.

The storm is moving fast, from the way the clouds billow. It’ll be here soon. Yasha rises from the window and descends the stairs into the main room of the inn. The rest of the Mighty Nein are out on their own errands; she didn’t expect a chance to say goodbye anyway.

The main room is quiet. It’s too early for dinner, and the few people there are mostly sitting alone. Yasha makes for the door, keeping her head down, and—

“Hey, Yash.”

Yasha turns, and there’s Beau, sitting in a booth with her legs propped up on the bench and her tankard raised in a lazy salute. Yasha hesitates a moment, then crosses the room and sits on the other side of the booth.

“I’ve been trying to remember this song,” Beau says without preamble. “Tune’s stuck in my head and I only know a couple of the words.” She takes a gulp from her tankard. “Think you know it?”

“Maybe. I don’t know a lot of songs.”

“Nah, s’all right. You either know it or you don’t.”

Beau continues to stare into her tankard. Yasha closes her eyes, feels the storm approach.

She hears something, suddenly. Soft and low, shivering a little. Beau’s humming the song, Yasha realizes, and the tune— well, it isn’t unfamiliar.

Yasha listens as Beau reaches the end of the verse, then breaks off with a frustrated sigh. She leans her head against the wall, eyes closed.

Yasha does know the words, now she thinks of it. Almost. She knows the shape of the song, at least.

The storm is coming closer, inexorably.

Yasha opens her mouth and sings, quiet as she can, “If you miss me when I’m gone, you will know the road I’m on, you can hear the thunder roll a hundred miles. A hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles, you can hear the thunder roll a hundred miles.”

Beau has opened her eyes, and she’s watching Yasha closely, still leaning back against the wall.

“Was that right?” Yasha asks.

“Don’t know,” Beau says. “Keep going.”

So Yasha sings, a little louder this time, “Not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name, oh I can’t go back home this-a-way. This-a-way, this-a-way, this-a-way, this-a-way, oh I can’t go back home this-a-way…”

“ _Damn_ ,” Beau says. “That was good, that was really good.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“I think the words I learned might be different.” Beau’s voice lilts a little as she says, matching the cadence of the song, “But I’ll find my way back home someday.” She shrugs. “Whatever.”

“Where did you learn it?”

Beau shrugs again. “A while ago.” Which is a when, not a where, but it answers Yasha’s question well enough.

“I have to leave,” Yasha says, and stands. It’s true; she can feel the storm rolling in.

“Hey, uh—” Beau says, and when Yasha looks back, her eyes are as sharp as her darts, clouded over like the roiling sky above. “Thanks,” she says, fast and soft. Raw at the edges.

“Of course,” Yasha says.

Beau nods.

Yasha nods back, and then she turns and leaves the inn.

 

 

IV.

The walls of the slot canyon stretch high above them, showing only a sliver of sky. Beau’s already getting a crick in her neck, looking up at the darkening clouds.

“You seem awfully nervous,” Caduceus says.

Beau flicks a glance at him. He looks totally unaffected. “Yeah, well. See those lines? On the rocks?” She points up the canyon wall, where the color of the stone changes from light to dark.

Caduceus looks. “Yes.”

“If it starts raining, it could flood up to there.” Beau can climb that for sure, could probably climb right up out of here, but she has serious doubts about Caduceus’s ability to haul ass at need.

“Huh,” Caduceus says.

“That’s bad,” Beau says. “Like— you know that song? Goes like, you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine?” She says the words flatly.

“I’ve never heard it. Why, is it about someone drowning in a canyon?”

“Yeah,” Beau says, “yeah, it is.”

“Huh,” Caduceus says again, sounding pleased. “How does it go?”

Beau glares at him, but he seems… oddly sincere. So she says, “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine.”

Caduceus peers at her. “Is that it?”

“What? You want me to sing it?”

“Well, sure.”

So, begrudgingly, Beau sings, “In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine, lived a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter Clementine.” Her voice echoes oddly off the walls of the canyon. A glance back at Caduceus shows he’s watching her with a curious smile on his face. “Light she was, and like a fairy, and her shoes were number nine. Herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.”

What’s the next verse? Beau pauses to listen for rain, then keeps going. “Drove she ducklings, to the water, every morning just at nine, hit her foot upon a splinter, fell into the foaming brine.”

Caduceus is humming along. He must’ve picked up the melody. Fine.

“Ruby lips above the water, blowing bubbles soft and fine, but alas I was no swimmer, so I lost my Clementine. Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine.”

The next verses get… kinda dark, she thinks. But Caduceus drinks dead people tea. He can handle it.

“In my dreams she still does haunt me, robed in garments soaked in brine, though in life I used to hug her, now in death I draw the line. How I missed her, how I missed her, how I missed my Clementine, so I kissed her little sister, and forgot my Clementine.”

Beau takes a deep breath and fucking belts the last chorus, even though there’s not a lot to belt. Caduceus joins in for it, and their voices ring out strangely in the slot canyon. “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine.”

“That’s it,” Beau says, after a moment.

“That was nice,” Caduceus says. “And look.” He points up ahead, to where the canyon bends obliquely and starts to open out. Beau looks up, searching, and spots the smoke of a campfire rising over the canyon rim.

“We’re out,” she says.

“And we didn’t die in a flood,” Caduceus says.

“Yeah,” Beau says. “Pretty good.”

              

 

V.

There weren’t any plants in the window boxes of the Leaky Tap when they got there. Caduceus made note of it.

One morning, when most of the Mighty Nein are off doing something or other, he goes out front of the Leaky Tap and pats his fingers into the soil in the window boxes. It’s damp from the rain last night. Autumn rain, cold and beckoning winter, but these seeds will grow. Caduceus knows this like he knows there are two moons in the night sky.

Oh, but the seeds. Yes. Caduceus makes little divots in three long rows, spacing them just so. When that’s done, he tears open the first packet of seeds he bought in the Pentamarket. It smells heavenly. Caduceus smiles.

Two seeds in each hole. Smooth the soil over. Caduceus hums as he works. He’s so engrossed that he doesn’t even notice Jester until she says, “Caduceus!”

Caduceus turns to look at her. Well, down at her; Jester doesn’t come up to his shoulder. “Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

“Planting seeds,” he says. “Calendula, hyssop, and chamomile. They make very good teas.”

“Oh, pretty,” Jester says. “What were you humming? Just now?”

Caduceus has to think about that one. But, yes, that was a song, wasn’t it? He hums a little bit of it again. “It’s a song my sister likes,” he says.

“Well, how does it go?”

It takes Caduceus a moment’s thought to recall the words, but he’s happy to sing them for Jester. “Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow, all it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground. Inch by inch, row by row, someone bless these seeds I sow, someone warm them from below ‘til the rain comes tumbling down.”

Caduceus tips calendula seeds into his hand and starts to plant them carefully. He keeps singing, because why not?

“Plant your rows straight and long, temper them with prayer and song, and the land will keep you strong if you give it love and care.”

Jester leans over, picking the seeds out of his palm and planting them two by two in another row.

“Grain by grain, sun and rain, find my way in nature’s chain, tune my body and my brain to the music of the land.”

Was there another verse? Maybe, but Caduceus doesn’t remember it. So he sings the first part again. “Inch by inch, row by row—”

Jester joins in, her voice high to Caduceus’s low. “Gonna make this garden grow, all it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground…”

“You sing well,” Caduceus says appreciatively when they’ve finished the song.

Jester grins, her head tilting like a sparrow’s. “So do you!” A thought seems to come to her. “Oh. Caduceus?”

“Yes?” Caduceus opens the chamomile seeds and starts on the other window box.

“What I was going to ask is, why are you planting seeds in the Leaky Tap’s window boxes?”

“Well, I thought I should give them a little something for putting us up here.”

“But we paid them,” Jester says, sounding confused.

Caduceus nods. “Yes, but this is from me.”

“Okay,” Jester says, and reaches for the packet of hyssop seeds.

He’s glad, Caduceus thinks, to have found friends in the Mighty Nein.

 

 

VI.

It’s awfully strange, being back in Nicodranas. Jester hasn’t even been gone so long. But she feels a little different now.

She sits on the harbor wall and looks out to sea. Just like she used to. The moon glitters on the low, dark waves. There are ships passing out there, lanterns lit bright red and green, making swift shapes through the beam of the lighthouse.

Jester sings, quietly, feeling the words slip past her lips and vanish in the air. Not as good as her mama. But no one’s as good as her mama.

There are footsteps behind her. Jester’s head snaps over her shoulder. She’s cloaked in a disguise spell, but still.

Fjord stands there, hand on the back on his neck, looking a bit sheepish. It’s sweet. “Oh, uh, Jester. Sorry to disturb you—”

“No, it’s no problem,” Jester says, and pats the spot of wall next to her. “Come sit.”

Fjord does. Jester can feel the warmth coming off him even in the hazy night, and she leans a little closer.

“What’re you doing out here?” Fjord asks after a minute.

“Singing,” Jester says. She knows it’s not quite what he meant.

“Singing what, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Jester shrugs. “Oh, you know, nothing really.”

“I’d love to hear,” Fjord says, in that way he does when he’s being very honest.

And, all right, Jester can’t say no to that. “Oh, well, it goes like this,” she says, and sings it a little louder. “Baaaarges, I would like to go with you, I would like to sail the ocean blue. Baaaaaar-ges, is there treasure in your hold, do you fight with pirates brave and bold.”

Fjord laughs a little. “I know that song. Used to hear it as a kid.”

“Yeah!” Jester says, and keeps going. “Out of my window, looking in the night, I can see the barges flickering bright.” It’s a little slower than the chorus, quieter. It reminds her of looking out her window late at night. “Starboard shines green and port is glowing red, I can see the barges up ahead. Baaaaarges, I would like to go with you—“

Fjord’s singing, she realizes. Singing along, a little lower than her, smooth like the waves that roll over and over each other in the darkness.

Jester hardly stops, though. “—I would like to sail the ocean blue. Baaaaaar-ges, is there treasure in your hold, do you fight with pirates brave and bold.”

The second verse, she likes, especially because she thinks maybe her mama made it up for her. “How my heart longs to sail away with you, as you sail across the ocean blue. But I must sit beside my window clear, as the barges sail away from here…”

The song hangs between them in the night air.

“I used to want to go to sea,” Jester says after a moment. “I watched the ships all the time. I could just see them from my window. And then when I got big enough, I snuck down to the harbor and watched them.”

“I can see you doin’ that,” Fjord says, all quiet and rough at the edges. “I used to, too.”

So they sit and watch the sea together, and the ships pass in the night, and Jester feels part of herself settle inside.

 

 

VII.

Fjord’s least favorite part of any mission is the waiting. It gnaws at him, even with a pint in his hand and his ass on a tavern bench. It makes him fidgety. Restless.

“Settle down,” someone tells him. “Get a drink, relax.”

Fjord smiles and nods. “Got one already.” He raises his pint, takes a gulp. The ale’s pretty good. Nott is upstairs right now, rifling the innkeeper’s room and hopefully cracking the safe. Fjord’s job is to cover her escape, as there’s no way out except through the common room of the inn.

He takes another drink to cover his glance at the stairwell, and there’s a shadow on the wall that he doesn’t think was there before.

The shadow twitches, darting down two stairs. Yeah, that’s Nott, gotta be. She’s fidgeting on the stairs. Fjord can see her glance over her shoulder, bounce nervously on her toes.

Fjord raises his pint and calls out, “Let every good fellow now join in my song—”

There’s a beat where he thinks maybe no one knows the song, maybe this is the wrong town, and then three different people yell back, “ _Vive la compagnie!_ ”

“Success to each other and pass it along—”

“ _Vive la compagnie!_ _Hey!”_

Thank all the gods there are. The whole room comes in with the chorus. “ _Vive la, vive la, vive l’amour! Vive la, vive la, vive l’amour!_ _Vive l’amour, vive l’amour, vive la compagnie!_ ”

Fjord’s voice is totally lost in the ruckus. So are Nott’s footsteps as she dashes down the stairs, and skids under the nearest table.

“A friend on your left and a friend on your right—”

“ _Vive la compagnie!_ ”

“In love and good fellowship let us unite—”

“ _Vive la compagnie! Hey!_ ”

Those might not even be the right words. They’re sure not the right words in this tavern. But, fuck it, everyone knows the chorus. Fjord looks for Nott again. She’s— where did she go?

Tiny claws grab his ankle, and Fjord nearly jumps out of his skin. Luckily it just looks like he’s stomping his feet to the chorus. He knocks his pint onto the floor next to Nott, drops to one knee, and she’s right there, clutching a little lockbox. “She’s coming,” Nott hisses.

“The innkeeper?”

“Give me two more verses,” Nott says, “and then I’ll be out.” She scrambles down the length of the table.

Fjord pops up just in time for the next verse. “With friends all around us we’ll sing out our song—”

“ _Vive la compagnie!_ ”

“We’ll banish our troubles, it won’t take us long—”

“ _Vive la compagnie! Hey!_ ”

Fjord jumps up on the bench. If he can just get enough feet out of the way, maybe Nott can make a break for it. “ _Vive la, vive la, vive l’amour! Vive la, vive la, vive l’amour!_ _Vive l’amour, vive l’amour, vive la compagnie!_ ”

Sure enough, half the tavern jumps up on their own benches. Fjord stands tall and sings, loud as he can, “SHOULD TIME OR OCCASION COMPEL US TO PART—”

“ _VIVE LA COMPAGNIE!_ ”

“THESE DAYS SHALL FOREVER LIVE ON IN OUR HEARTS!”

“ _VIVE LA COMPAGNIE! HEY!”_

The door swings open, and two feet and a gray cloak flash through it into the night. Fjord grins and lets the chorus carry him away.

“ _VIVE LA, VIVE LA, VIVE L’AMOUR!_ _VIVE LA, VIVE LA, VIVE L’AMOUR! VIVE L’AMOUR, VIVE L’AMOUR, VIVE LA COMPAGNIE!_ ”

 

 

VIII.

It’s spring, early, the kind of day that still smells like winter. The days have been getting longer by inches, and sun is still rare, but the snow on the road is turning into mud and just the other day Nott saw little buds on a crabapple tree.

They don’t talk too much, her and Caleb. Mostly they just walk. Keep moving, Caleb says, and Nott agrees. It seems like Caleb knows a lot about not being found. Almost as much as her.

So they’re walking, and not talking, but it’s spring, and it’s making Nott think of this song she heard. It’s a Halfling song, she’s pretty sure.

“Caleb?”

He looks down at her. “ _Ja_ , what is it?”

“You know the song that’s like, hey, ho, nobody’s home, no?”

“…No.”

“Huh,” Nott says, and keeps walking. She’s pretty sure it went… she sings under her breath, “Hey, ho, nobody’s home, no meat no drink no money have I none.”

A walking song. That’s what it is. She tries again, matching it to her footsteps. “ _Hey_ , _ho_ , _no-_ body’s _home_ , no _meat_ no _drink_ no _mon_ -ey have I _none_. _Still_ , I _will_ , be _veeeee_ ry _very_ merry _hey_ , _ho_ , _no_ -body’s _home_.”

Not very long, so she sings it again. “ _Hey_ , _ho_ , _no_ -body’s _home_ , no—”

And suddenly Caleb comes in with the beginning as Nott starts the next part. “Hey, ho, nobody’s home, no…”

“ _Meat_ no _drink_ no _mon_ -ey have I _none_ , _still_ , I _will_ , be _veeee_ ry _very_ merry—”

“Meat no drink no money have I none,” Caleb sings, “still I will be very, very merry, hey, ho, nobody’s home.”

Nott finishes before him, and as soon as Caleb finishes, she says, “What was _that?_ ”

“Oh, ah— sorry—”

“No, that was good! That was really good! But you started late.”

“It is a canon,” Caleb says. “A round? You sing it out of turn.”

“Ohhhh,” Nott says. “So it’s supposed to sound like that.”

“ _Ja_ , I suppose so.” He pauses. “Do you know any more?”

Nott thinks. “There were other verses, but I forgot them.”

Caleb shakes his head. “That’s all right.”

They keep walking. Nott keeps singing the song under her breath, and sometimes Caleb joins in for a round, and sometimes it’s just her, but it’s still both of them on the road, putting one foot in front of the other, and softly singing their way.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Songs, in order: "Moon River", "Today", "500 Miles", "Clementine", "Inch by Inch, Row by Row" (aka Garden Song), "Barges", "Vive la Compagnie", "Hey Ho Nobody's Home". 
> 
> Lyrics and tunes tend to differ a lot, so I just used the versions I know, and in some cases condensed them a little. The songs on the playlist are the closest I could find to what I was thinking of. I did fidget with the lyrics for Yasha's version of 500 Miles, since Wildemount hasn't got trains.
> 
> Here's the playlist link again: https://bit.ly/2NJTiPA


End file.
